The Violinist
by NightShade Tears
Summary: "Care for a quick mystery before dinner?" New Year's fluffy Johnlock (of sorts)


"Oh, God, I could do with some food…" I said to my friend Sherlock Holmes after another successfully concluded case. It was winter; New Year's Eve, to be precise. We could've –should've- taken a cab back home, but Sherlock had insisted on walking. He usually had too much adrenaline in his system after a case, and he needed to burn it somehow, so here we were, freezing in London's icy winter air. He glanced sideways at me, giving me his patent "must be nice to have a simple mind with simple needs" look.

"Me too," he admitted quietly, smirking beneath his scarf. I raised my eyebrows at him. It wasn't very usual for Sherlock to admit to a normal, human necessity.

"Angelo's?" I asked.

"Speedy's might be better," he countered. "It is nearer and Angelo will be out celebrating anyways…"

His voice trailed off at the end, his eyes acquiring that faraway look he got when faced with new, unexpected information. We stopped, and I automatically knew to still my breathing.

"Sherlock?" I whispered. He shushed me, listening intently to something. Finally, he smiled down at me.

"Care for a quick mystery before dinner?" he asked. He took off without another word.

"Sherlock!" I called after him, breaking into a run a millisecond after him. I was soon left behind. I may have been a soldier once, and I was used to running, but Sherlock's legs were much longer than mine and he was used to chasing criminals all day long. I was thankful for the recent dust-like snow that coated the streets. Without a clear path to follow, I may have lost my friend until next morning, maybe even a little longer. Sherlock's absence at Baker Street was something commonplace.

I found him at last under a streetlamp near the park, an expression of disappointment and mild disgust wrinkling his reddened nose.

"No mystery here. Just that girl over there butchering Tchaikovsky," he said, sensing my arrival at once. I glanced at the girl. She had a long grey coat on, contrasting greatly with the snow and her long red hair. She was playing a merry tune on a light brown violin, and from afar she was the perfect picture of a street artist, playing for the sake of playing.

"Butchering?" I asked Sherlock.

"That wrist position is ghastly!" he replied in an angry huff. "Any self-respecting violinist knows the wrist must be held down when playing, not close to the neck of the instrument. Besides, there's hardly any rosin in that bow, and she's using the chin rest wrong!"

"How so?" I wondered, looking at the girl again. Now that I looked at her, and compared her with the image of Sherlock playing, which I had memorized from many a rainy afternoon in Baker Street, she did look very… amateur.

"Chin rests are not for the chin, they're meant for the player to rest their jaw against. Ugh, I can't stand it," he muttered, advancing towards the girl. "Give that here, now."

There was a dissonant note as the girl stopped playing, startled by Sherlock's sudden approach. She wielded the bow like a sword.

"Don't worry, he doesn't bite," I called to her. "Sherlock, apologize."

He sneered at me. I raised an eyebrow. He sighed.

"Fine… sorry. Give that here, please," he told the girl, holding out his hand for the violin. The girl looked at me for reassurance. I nodded, and she seemed to relax. Sherlock took the instrument from her.

He began playing a rhythmical tune, light and merry and slightly Irish-sounding. Must've been one of his compositions, for I hadn't heard it before, and neither had the girl if her expression was anything to go by. She began laughing.

"How did you know?" she asked, her accent evidently Irish. He didn't answer; he was completely lost in his melody.

"He doesn't know, he observes," I answered for him, rolling my eyes. "He probably could tell by your hair or something."

"What about it?" she asked me, a bit defensively.

"Nothing," I replied, holding up my hands in surrender. "It's quite pretty, really."

She smiled at me for a second, then took my hands and pulled me to a dance. I followed her lead, and she followed Sherlock's playing, her voice ringing in mirth like crystal bells.

"Oh goodness, you dance even worse than you play," Sherlock's baritone interrupted the music. The girl was shoved away from me and my friend's tall frame replaced her. She yelped her annoyance at my flat mate.

"Play," he ordered, and as an afterthought added a mumbled "please".

The girl smirked and took the violin from Sherlock. She resumed playing, an improvisation, going from the sometimes out of harmony notes, but it was still pretty good; at least, good enough that Sherlock didn't complain about it anymore.

"Come on, John. Let's see if I can teach you to dance," he told me, taking me by the waist. I frowned at him and took his waist.

"No way you're leading me," I countered. His eyes widened, unused to being confronted, but he quickly eased his stance. Neither of us was about to follow the other, but both of us wanted to lead, so we ended up swaying awkwardly in a dance that was more of a tug of war that was somehow still in time with the girl's melody in the background.

We didn't realize how much time had passed until the Big Ben tolled the midnight stroke in the distance, and fireworks rose all around us. Sherlock and I stopped dancing and looked at the multicolored stars shining and fading above us. Sometime during then, the girl had finished packing up and left, most likely headed to her own celebration, or perhaps to give us some of the privacy people always thought Sherlock and I needed. We were not a couple, for crying out loud…

"Happy New Year, John," he said to me, his pale face illuminated by green and red sparks. He smiled down at me, one of his rare genuine smiles. Okay, maybe we were a couple, just a little.

"Happy New Year, Sherlock."


End file.
